2008 - 2009

Nov.21, 2008

[Old message from February 18 2008, only just found]
your website sucks can not retrive simple info without severe trouble congradulations just wanted to find places to play shinny hockey in the city what a nightmare using your program ridiculas will cc sanadra bussin but it is not her fault this is typical city of toronto joke and waste of resourses
K.S.

Response:
Hello -- I just found this message -- did I miss it last February, as the date of the e-mail says? Sorry you had trouble finding what you wanted on the website. But we are not actually a city-run website and therefore you don't need to worry about wasting your taxes (if that is part of your beef).

Maybe if you can let me know which rinks you want to play shinny at, I can copy the information for you. There are city schedule links in the right column of the cityrinks.ca home page: City Skating Brochures.

Two other possibilities:

1. check out the rink map, then click on the rinks you're interested in and use the prominently listed phone numbers to call them and ask about their shinny times

2. Come to Dufferin Rink and tell us your shinny-locating problems in person. Just don't use the word "suck" -- it's not a fun word, and shinny players are usually pretty much fun.

December 27 2008

There was never an answer to the email above.

On this day: Parent and child shinny, parents say it is the best and that they wish they had more hours, other parents say that during the holidays it is well attended (requiring shifts of little kids and their parents!) but that usually it is more calm. There must be 30 people on the ice. The kids are suited up with hockey pads, jerseys and helmets, most adults have helmets but some don't.

The outdoor information board has a too small copy of the schedule and the brochure which is basically to high for any non professional basket ball player to read and again the type is too small. However efforts have been made: the staff have a stack of schedules available and there is an innovative note on the outdoor board by the rink saying "find staff over there" with an arrow.

Inside the changerooms it is as dismal, although clean, as ever. The ice is good, they are getting a minimum of 3 floods and scrapes a day, sometimes 5. Staff are friendly. Staff have made another invention: they have a sign up sheet for helmets and they put duct tape on the helmets (official ones from the city "Nike") so that people write down their names to borrow a helmet and staff have 6 helmets available!

As usual there is a lot of ice to navigate between the rink and the staff room. Also the pathways to the rink for the boardwalk, Lee avenue and Waverley are not cleared.

Friday January 23 2009

At 6.45 there was a big Montessori School permit on the ice. More parents and little kids kept coming -- looked like it was 70-80 people.

Montessori school arriving for their family skate night

the rink guard said that the permit was taking the place of normal Fiday night pleasure skating. He also said that the ice had been giving them trouble -- there were long deep cracks all over the ice and the rink had been closed for two hours in the afternoon for a special maintenance session. He said that there is an old zamboni from North York in a garage at Kew, but for this special maintenance they brought over a better zamboni. the driver scraped the ice, then gave it repeated "towel-floods," and afterwards the cracks were much less.

The rink guard also said that most of the weekend there's not much shinny.